BREAKING NEWS

51 Atlanta homicides from 2016 unsolved

ATLANTA - A young woman was standing outside a Buckhead bar in July when gunfire erupted in the parking lot.

Taylor Hayden, 25, visiting Atlanta on a “girls’ weekend” from Texas, was killed in the crossfire. About 1,500 people reportedly attended the funeral for Hayden, who graduated from Prairie View A&M University, and her father pleaded for someone to come forward with information.

But that homicide, along with 50 others from 2016, remains unsolved.

Atlanta recorded 111 murders in 2016, making it the city’s deadliest year in nearly a decade. The year before, Atlanta saw 95 murders, the AJC has reported.

Henry Horton, who also went by the name Diamond, was a popular hairstylist who worked out of his home on Richland Road in southwest Atlanta.

Last fall, his family said a client found him shot to death in his living room.

"If we could just know who did this and why, it would give us some peace," the victim's aunt, who raised him like a son, told Channel 2's Nefertiti Jaquez.

It was clear by summer that 2016 wasn’t in good shape; the murder rate was up 25 percent by July. In Zone 3 on the south side, 22 murders had happened by then, equaling all of 2014 in that zone.

As a result, the city unveiled Operation Whiplash, which called for the creation of a task force that Mayor Kasim Reed said would “dramatically increase resources to respond and investigate gun-related violent crime in our city.”

The approach slowed the murder rate some, but it “didn’t have the success that we hoped,” Atlanta Police Deputy Chief Darryl Tolleson said last month.

Atlanta police accept tips, which can be anonymous, through Crime Stoppers Atlanta tip line at 404-577-TIPS (8477), online at www.crimestoppersatlanta.org or by texting CSA and the tip to CRIMES (274637).